Well I think the first and most important mechanic to weakness is that it stops crits. If it were just damage reduction it would simply be like a mirrored protection boon, and they wanted something more unique.
The whole thing about it stopping crits makes crit sigils / on crit effects less prominent. And the people who feel REALLY punished by this are those who invest everything they have into power / crit with little survivability / sustain / condition removal.
This is not to say, however, that it is overkill. I think the crit chance reduction thing is somewhat of a good idea, because then traits that proc on crit, are much less likely to proc, which is actually effective against some condi classes that rely on crits to get things like burning out of it. The longer you push back that burning proc, the further “behind” they end up in a fight against you.
Unfortunately it’s really hard to actually determine whether or not you’re ahead of someone in this game in a fight to the death considering burst can happen so fast, or you can just get CC’d and shut down until you’re down.
Some classes honestly have too much and I think weakness was kind of a band-aid to it. It could likely do with less damage reduction than it has now. I assume Arenanet was intending for players to get more into balanced builds rather than all or nothing. But that’s going to require a lot of tweaks / positive balance changes to make that realistically happen. :/
